The Doctor Weighs In

By Dov Michaeli MD, Ph.D

A few days ago my good friend Michael Millenson steered me to a video on a website called Ted.com (www.ted.com/talks/view/id/229). What I saw there was so profound and so exhilarating that I had to replay it several times. It was nothing short of an epiphany.

The view from within

"Neuroanatomist Jill Bolte Taylor had an opportunity few brain scientists would wish for: One morning, she realized she was having a massive stroke. As it happened – as she felt her brain functions slip
away one by one, speech, movement, understanding -- she studied and
remembered every moment. This is a powerful story about how our brains define us and connect us to the world and to one another".

To put things in context. In Biology we study cells, organs, and organisms. We study in detail their molecular makeup, their anatomy and their behavior. But there is one drawback: we are on the outside, trying to decipher the inside workings. We cannot physically get into a cell and observe its workings. So we do the second best, and use all kinds of tools and signs that suggest what is going on inside. We assume that these signs indeed reflect the inside reality. For instance, a cells recoils in response to a noxious stimulus. We can see under the microscope the scaffolding of a cell (a) organizing itself into cable-like structures(b), shortening on the one hand, elongating on the other, and the cell moves. We can inhibit the organizing of the scaffolding and abort the movement. So we ascribe the movement to the action of the molecular scaffolding—an eminently reasonable assumption.

But an assumption nonetheless. For instance, have we ruled out beyond a reasonable doubt that the chemical we used to inhibit the activity of the scaffolding hasn’t affected a yet undiscovered system, which could be the real driver of the cell’s response to the stimulus? We cannot get into the cell and directly observe the scaffold molecules tugging on the membrane; we stain the molecules that make up the scaffold so we can observe them, we measure their length and thickness before, during and after the movement, we inhibit their activity by adding inhibitory molecules or drugs. Based on all these observations we conclude that they are all consistent with the scaffold being responsible for cell movement. If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, quacks like a duck—it must be a duck.

The pitfalls of observing from the outside

The danger is that these kind of observations basically amount to connecting the dots. And in the vast majority of cases, the picture we paint stands the test of accumulating evidence. But as we know from bitter experience, one can have a set of observations (the “dots”), and connect them in more than one way, many times in ways that serve an agenda rather than the truth. For a while there flourished a sociological specialty of “deconstructing” the sociology of science. These were non-scientists who looked at science from the outside, by interviews, observations of behaviors, interpretations of statements, "deconstruction" of writings—and then coming to conclusions about the workings of the scientific enterprise. Their theories were so laughable, so off the mark as to be outrageous, sometimes tinged with malice. I know it—I was on the inside,  they were on the outside looking in, through distorting lens as it were.

What does all this have to do with nirvana?

When we study the brain, we are basically outsiders looking in; we make reasonable assumptions, we arrive at reasonable conclusions. But we don’t directly experience the phenomena we are studying. That’s why I was so struck by Jill Bolte Taylor’s account of her left-sided stroke. Her left hemisphere slowly shut down while her right hemisphere continued to function more or less normally (the connections between the right and left hemispheres, called corpus callosum, were disrupted). Now, from countless observations and experiments we know that the left hemisphere is the seat of analytical thought, of memory, of language, of all our “executive” functions. The right hemisphere is the seat of our position in space, creativity, of art and music and the sense of wonder. But is that all? Dr. bolte Taylor's detailed account of the experience tells us that we were missing a deeper function of the right brain.

What she experienced was that unlike the left hemisphere, where boundaries of objects are sharply demarcated, the boundaries of things as perceived by the right hemisphere are fuzzy, they tend to merge with their surroundings. Objects appear misshapen, having indistinct boundaries. She felt that she is literally merging with the environment, becoming one with the universe. And in Buddhist writings, that’s the essence of what they call nirvana.

I know, I know, sounds like more “new age”-speak. Or just a malfunctioning brain akin to an LSD trip. But mind you, this is not your next door “flower child” speaking—this is a hard-nosed Harvard-trained neurobiologist chronicling her experience. This is a scientist observing from the inside!

The possibilities are endless

If true, then we can begin to understand the mechanism of meditation. We can possibly understand better the creative process, the deeper meaning of art, and music, and poetry. And maybe, just maybe, we could learn to become one with our environment, our world, and our fellow human beings.